Artists create relief art or three dimensional art by crafting or working a malleable material, such as clay, into a desired shape. Relief art is also created by cast and molding a material into a desired shape using a cast or die. Relief structure is added to paintings and painted surfaces by applying more or less of a malleable or pliable pigment medium, such as an oil base paint, and sculpting the pigment material with a knife or a brush to produce the desired appearance and texture. Oil based paints are used in relief paintings because they do not shrink significantly during drying and aging. However, oil based paints are typically expensive and require the use of solvent to clean up after usage or spillage. Thus, oil based paints are not well suited for use by adolescents and small children.
Decorative relief art gives three dimensional structure to a wide variety of coverings including floor coverings, counter tops, cabinets, wall paper and the like. Decorative relief art is typically produced on these materials by embossing their surfaces with a negative mask under pressure or under heat and pressure to produce the desired three dimensional structure and texture. Embossing methods are used to provide relief art on wood surfaces, some plastic surfaces and paper surfaces. Embossing methods are generally not suitable for producing relief art on very hard brittle surfaces, such as the surfaces of glass, or very soft resilient surfaces, such the surface of fabrics and cloths.
Producing relief art on a surface of a clothing article is particularly challenging because the relief art used must be able to bend and flex along with the clothing over several repeated deformations. Further, the relief medium used must adhere strongly to the cloth or the fabric of the clothing and must be resilient enough to withstand washing machine conditions. Therefore, there is a need to provide a versatile decorating medium, system and method for producing relief art on a wide variety of substrate surfaces including cloth and fabric surfaces.